[s777]

I daily drive Asahi Linux on my M1 MBA for CS in college. Currently, it's usable enough for that, coding, and casual web browsing, but for other use cases it still has a ways to go.

Right now, the area that needs the most improvement is software support. x86 Linux is already not ideal in that it isn't supported for a lot of commercial software and games, but ARM Linux is even worse in that regard, since even a lot of open source software isn't supported, at least not on the AUR. Along with that, the M1 doesn't support 32-bit software, so AFAIK there is no good way to use WINE to run Windows software currently.

A lot of open source software like LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox/LibreWolf/Brave (only release version for FF), Webcord, and Signal can simply be installed using an AUR helper like paru. However, a good chunk of open source software isn't supported for aarch64 on the AUR, like Logseq, Joplin, Element, Sonixd, Bitwarden, Tor browser, Mullvad browser, just to name a few, so you'll need to figure out how to compile and update them yourself (I personally haven't bothered since I can live without them for now, and I couldn't get the "-git" packages to work either). Widevine can be installed (to use Spotify in a web browser), but the process is very hacky. Jetbrains IDEs can be installed, but Toolbox is not supported and a lot of the AUR packages don't support aarch64, so you'll need to install a lot of them manually. It is also possible to emulate x86 machines with QEMU (I used it to run Kali Linux for a cybersecurity course), but the performance is extremely bad and I don't recommend it. I also have not been able to install Blender or Unity, so for software like that you'll probably need to boot into macOS. And don't even think about running games yet, except for maybe Minecraft, Minetest, and SuperTuxKart.

Fortunately, the Asahi devs are aware that the software support is terrible, and they are making a lot of progress toward fixing it. Asahi Lina posted a video recently demonstrating running a variety of Windows games using her custom kernel (which I am currently super excited for), and Martin says that the main distro is going to be changed from Arch Linux ARM to one that actually has good aarch64 package support (which is rumored to be Fedora). So it looks like this situation will improve in the not-too-distant future.

There's also currently a variety of other quirks from it being alpha WIP software, such as no speaker support (which is currently being worked on), no external displays, no microphone, no camera, no fingerprint, worse battery life/sleep, and random crashes/lockups (although this has been a problem on every Linux laptop I've used).

So based on this, whether I'd recommend it depends on how much you love Linux and FOSS and whether it is compatible with your workflow. I personally hate relying on proprietary software for everyday personal use, so I am willing to put up with the quirks to have a system that I have full control over (and considering how amazing the Asahi devs are, I am confident that it will eventually get to a more usable state). If you're in the same boat, I'd recommend giving it a shot. If you just want a computer that works well, on the other hand, or you use a lot of graphical creation-related software, you'll probably want to stick with macOS instead for now, or get an x86 laptop like a ThinkPad.

(If you use it, make sure to use the edge kernel since it has all of the latest interesting features like GPU support. The installer also comes with a preconfigured setup with KDE, although you can also install bare bones ALARM like I did and install everything through the command line.)